The statements in this section may serve as a background to help understand the invention and its application and uses, but may not constitute prior art.
Computer video games have come a long way since its first invention. From Pac-Man to Pokemon Go, from arcade machines to multiplayer gaming platforms, game developers are aiming for ever more intriguing story lines, more thrilling game maps, more intensive visual effects, and more social networking capabilities to attract old and new players of all ages. The advent of eSports or competitive gaming has further made computer video gaming into a global spectator sport, where fans attend live-gaming tournaments held in major sporting venues, or watch livestreamed game videos through platforms such as Twitch. In both cases, game action is generally shown on screen through a birds-eye view or a first-person view, while other screens or picture-in-picture windows show images of the players' faces as they play. As broadcasting and watching gameplays become more akin to watching a live football or soccer game, it is no surprise that demand for spectator-level customization and game moment highlight and replay are on the rise significantly.
Nonetheless, current technologies for live-processing or post-processing of game plays to generate game videos for instant replay are often lacking in intelligent game moment recognition or intelligent video editing. In addition, viewing perspectives for game event replays are often limited, and special graphical or highlight effects are either restricted, or entirely absent.
Furthermore, modern computing technologies have brought in a new era of immersive experiences with virtual reality, where immersion enhances the gaming or spectating experience by making it more realistic, engaging, and interactive, with images, sounds, and haptic feedbacks that simulate the user's presence in a virtual three-dimensional (3D) environment. Still, VR content creation, either during initial game development, or during game video live-processing or post-processing, is a non-trivial task. Rendering, compressing, streaming, and replaying of VR videos necessitate high processing power and careful resource management. Conversion of existing video games and eSport platforms into their VR counterparts is equally challenging, as traditional controls and user interfaces often do not work well in VR, while simulation sickness and latency need to be taken into account. Compounded with such inherent difficulties in VR content generation, game event or moment replays involving game action analysis, event capture, highlight, and replay in a VR environment becomes very hard to achieve.
Therefore, in view of the aforementioned difficulties, there is an unsolved need to make it easy to analyze, capture and record real-time live game plays of existing computer video games, and stream and/or replay ensuing game videos, possibly in a virtual reality environment. In addition, it would be an advancement in the state of the art of game replays to automatically edit, curate, and generate intelligent video highlights of the most important actions taking place during a game play.
It is against this background that various embodiments of the present invention were developed.